


Does Our Ruin Benefit The Earth?

by brasspetal



Series: The Nameless Quiet [3]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Affection, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 19:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11132853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasspetal/pseuds/brasspetal
Summary: In Alexandria, there’s always a clock ticking.





	Does Our Ruin Benefit The Earth?

**Author's Note:**

> I suggest reading the other parts to this series because their relationship slowly develops but you don't have to. I will be continuing it!
> 
> *Title is part of a quote from the movie The Thin Red Line

In Alexandria, there’s always a clock ticking.

Rick sits in a quiet house that isn’t his, and thinks he hears the _tick tock_ of a watch from somewhere. It's always far away and muffled. It's a reminder.

There was never enough of it. Time was a slippery bastard. So much of it slips through his fingers, like the daylight collapsing into night.

It was disorienting, like he was stuck on fast-forward somehow. People are changing, dying and distancing. They're all slipping out of his fingers too. Except Daryl.

Daryl is a constant, a statue to ward against time.

One of these days the dead that walk along the horizon, will climb inside his skull, and eat away what’s left. They’ll devour Alexandria. Rick knows this, yet he stays.

 _Where would they go?_ Would they wander aimless along the divide like they do?

_Tick. Tock._

The crows are squawking violently outside, they're hungry too.

Carl steps inside then, slamming the screen door shut and he glances at Rick.

“Daryl is looking for you.” 

\--

There are moments that Rick thinks that nature was just being nature. All the laws thereof. There's a savageness to the vines that wrapped themselves around everything. It’s as if nature had waited eagerly for their extinction.

Daryl and Rick find an abandoned shack in the middle of the woods they’ve yet to explore. It just sat there, torn up to pieces by the plants invading the inside.

There’s a white flower growing by the window sill that reminded Rick of the Cherokee roses that grew in Georgia. He knew it makes Daryl think of Sofia. Sofia who trusted them to find her; forever lost in those woods.  

Daryl taps Rick's shoulder and points to the trees. There's a hawk soaring overhead looking for rodents. Its shadow passes over them and they watch it until it disappears behind leaves, stretching upwards towards the sky.

Rick’s hand bumps against Daryl’s purposefully. He didn’t know how to do this. Daryl doesn’t move away and Rick grabs Daryl's wrist as if he's going to tell him something but there was nothing that needed to be said right now.

His fingers wrap around his wrist bone, always meant to fit, _exactly there._

He can feel Daryl’s pulse against his finger tips and it was quickening at a calm pace.

They part a moment later and enter the abandoned shack.

There isn’t much to look at but it would be a place to eat and listen.  A place to listen to their breathing in tandem and the shuffling of their comforting movement.

It rains and it’s one long downpour. The wind is beating against the wood as if it could crack apart but they didn’t pay it no mind.

“The crows are gettin’ angry.” Rick says and he doesn’t know why he says it.

Daryl chews on squirrel meat, holding up a small knife to stick into the wood beside him. He passes some to Rick.

“They’re eatin’ nothin’ but dead flesh.” Daryl comments and Rick nods. He guesses he’d be angry too. There’s a moment that they just catch each other’s eyes from across the fire, just long enough to set Rick off balance.

The growing _something_ between them has yet to lessen. It just kept getting bigger, filling his head with nonsense.  

Rick rubs his chin like he has something thoughtful to say but nothing comes out of his mouth.

Daryl's going to be the one to say something this time but the comforting warmth was cut short with a garbled wail.  

A few walkers pile up in the rain, tripping over themselves in the mud. Rick and Daryl both stand from the fire, weapons at the ready.

There are more of them then they originally thought. Once they're outside, and fighting with two of them, more decide to join the foray. Daryl's quick about dispatching a couple with his crossbow. Rick can hardly see. The rain was so heavy and they are soaked through. They send most of them back into the Earth. This is their rhythm, their dance. There’s a synchronicity to their movements. The woods wanted this for them both. They fight together like they're something from myth. Those stories weren’t told any longer, so they had to be creatures within them, come to life.

Once the walkers are finally gone, Rick turns to Daryl, soaked and bloodied. They stand there like two halves of something greater.

Their breathing is loud when they enter the quiet shack, and they lean against the wall inside to catch it.

“Think we’ll ever run outta em'?” Daryl asks and he bends down to get something from his bag.

“The dead?”

Daryl doesn’t answer and he pulls a dry rag from his bag. He walks over to Rick and Rick expects him to hand it to him, as one of those quiet kindnesses but he doesn’t.

Daryl takes the rag and begins to wipe the blood from Rick’s face. It startles him at first but he doesn’t move away. Rick just stands there, still, and Daryl seems as comfortable as ever, as if this is routine.

The gesture makes him whole. Rick closes his eyes against it. There’s a moment of clarity; his thoughts coming together. This is all he was, assembled and reassembled.

Rick opens his eyes and gently grabs Daryl’s wrist, as he did in the woods earlier. They stand there and the comforting quiet gives way to something new. Daryl is staring straight at him with what appeared to be open affection. Anyone else might not recognize it but he does.

There’s lightning and thunder cracks, breaking them apart.

Rick Grimes had given Daryl Dixon what was left of his heart a long time ago. Daryl had kept it safe in the pulse beneath the flesh of his wrist.


End file.
